The road to recovery
How Coca-Cola is helping the hospitality industry through challenging times
The Covid-19 pandemic has hit businesses hard, but nowhere more so than the hospitality sector. Pubs, restaurants and takeaways are facing significant hardship as lockdown measures force them to temporarily close their doors. The road to recovery will be challenging, but there has been support along the way from one of the sector’s long-standing partners.In April last year, Coca-Cola Great Britain (CCGB) paused all its commercial activity and redirected efforts to supporting retail partners and local community businesses. To date, the Coca-Cola Company, its bottling partners and The Coca-Cola Foundation have donated more than $120 million (£87 million) to support Covid-19 relief efforts worldwide. When Coca-Cola lifted its pause on commercial advertising in August of last year, it returned with the Open Like Never Before campaign to help independent businesses get back on their feet. This support included access to the AdCreator platform, where customers created free social media and outdoor adverts for their business. From the hundreds of AdCreator customers, several were chosen to receive amplified support, including placement across outdoor billboards in their local area. One such customer was Melise Keough, owner of the Angel & Crown in London, who saw her pub advertised on the iconic Old Street billboard after reopening last summer. “When I was preparing to reopen the pub, I had to allocate any spare budget towards helping us reopen and welcome customers back safely and hadn’t even considered spending money on advertising,” she says. With help from Coca-Cola, the Angel & Crown’s ads encouraged local regulars to return and attracted new faces in-person, many of whom used the pub’s takeaway and delivery service during lockdown.
Bouncing back in 2021
Keough’s pub is one of many businesses that will continue to receive support from Coca-Cola throughout 2021. Now the UK is plotting a route out of lockdown, CCGB is launching a Business Accelerator programme to continue advertising support and provide expert advice from senior Coca-Cola executives on marketing, brandbuilding and sustainability. Plus, there’s help around driving footfall, business growth and development.
The goal is for Coca-Cola and its affiliated businesses – including Costa Coffee, Innocent and CCEP – to share their expertise, with business owners getting the chance to ask questions and gain insights to take away and apply to the real-life challenges they face. Spanning across six virtual webinars, the content will eventually be packaged and shared for the wider hospitality industry to access through CocaCola Great Britain’s bespoke customer hub.
Additional support will be provided on the subject of driving behavioural change. With the UK poised to emerge from lockdown at the end of June, businesses will need to understand how customer interaction with retail environments evolve and change. This section of the Business Accelerator programme will see experts from Influence at Work (IAW), a team of behavioural scientists, offer participants both remote and 1-to-1 on-site consultations to give practical support for businesses as they plan to reintroduce customers to their spaces.
When businesses reopen fully in June, IAW will also visit each participant for factfinding and observation, see how customers react in the environment, offer a general assessment on post-lockdown behaviour and identify fresh hurdles for the hospitality industry.
Now might be an extremely testing time for hospitality, but with support programmes in place from brands like CocaCola, independent businesses are being given a helping hand to meet the challenges that lie ahead. Learn more about Coca-Cola’s support for UK business at Coca-Cola.co.uk